Lord British To Return To His Long Absent Throne, Possibly Look Around, Then Leave Again

Do you have $3.8 million lying about? Richard Garriott wants to talk to YOU.

Lord British's New Britannia (working title) will be a social networking game built around Garriott's famous alter ego, which he wholly owns - as opposed to the Ultima universe, which Electronic Arts has the rights to.

Any actual description of "what a social networking game built around a guy who was in those Ultima games" entails was left as an exercise for someone (possibly the person(s) who get stuck with actually making Lord British's New Britannia once the all important "Getting rights to the name", "Getting $3.8 million in funding", and "Turning my castle into a spaceship that can orbit the greater Austin area and rain down holy fire upon the just and the unjust" steps have been completed). However, Garriott had this solitary tidbit:

...the virtual world game is not just an ultra-light MMO shopped on social media. I think that would be a failure.

So, you know, it'll have a lot of depth. He said so. Right there. Or it'll be a failure. It'll be one of those.

Meanwhile, nothing has been heard of a related project, SEE Entertainment's Planet: Michael.